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Vol: 1, Issue: 3
*Corresponding author: Essam E. Khalil, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt; E mail: khalil_ceb@yahoo.com
Article Type: Research, Submission Date: 01 February 2016, Accepted Date: 25 February 2016, Published Date: 08 March 2016.
Citation: Eslam Said Abdelghany, Essam E Khalil, Osama E Abdellatif and Gamal elhariry (2016) Air Craft Winglet Design and
Performance: Cant Angle Effect. J Robot Mech Eng Resr 1(3): 28-34.
Copyright: © 2016 Essam E. Khalil, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and
source are credited.
Abstract Introduction
A winglet is a device used to improve the efficiency of aircraft by Most of the commercial long range aircraft has installed winglet to
lowering the lift induced drag caused by wingtip vortices. It is a decrease the induce drag to save more fuel [1], this feature can be
vertical or angled extension at the tips of each wing. Winglets also found on the bird. Bird use its feather at wingtip as “multiple
improve efficiency by diffusing the shed wingtip vortex, which winglet” [2] and [3], which can be seen Figure 1. Each feather has
in turn reduces the drag due to lift and improves the wing’s lift different angle with respect to the wing, and they are passively
over drag ratio Winglets increase the effective aspect ratio of a adapted to the different flight conditions, which is different from
wing without adding greatly to the structural stress and hence the fixed angle winglet in the conventional aircraft.
necessary weight of its structure. In this research, a numerical No single shaping of winglets stands out as an optimal geometry
validation procedure (by FLUENT ®, computational fluid [4], as long as the general guidelines of cant angle, sweep angle,
dynamics software with The Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model) twist angle, sufficient taper ratio, aerofoil type and length of
is described for determination and estimation aerodynamic winglet [5]. The selected geometry of the winglet is taken as the
characteristics of three dimension subsonic rectangular wing generalized cant-and sweep-angle (WCSA) (also called wing
(with NACA653218airfoil cross section). It was observed that with winglet cant-sweep angle) type, as shown in Figure 2.
at the present work a good agreement between the numerical
study and the experimental work. This paper describes a CFD Governing Equations
3-dimensional winglets analysis that was performed on a Cessna The air flow is typically modelled as 3-D compressible
wing of NACA2412 cross sectional airfoil. The wing has span viscous flow. Thus the governing equations are the continuity
13.16 m, root chord 1.857 m, tip chord 0.928 m, sweep angle 11 equation together with x, y and z- Navier-Stokes equations for
degree and taper ratio 0.5. The present study shows wing without a compressible flow. Turbulence is modelled by the Spalart-
winglet and wing with winglet at cant angle 0, 30 and 45 degree. Allmaras model. The complete system of equations is presented
A CFD simulation performs by to compare of aerodynamics here in the differential form, FLUENT® Documentation [7] and
characteristics of lift coefficient CL, drag coefficient CD and lift [8]. The governing equations in this model are:
to drag ratio, L/D lift, pathlines and pressure contours. The
models run at a Mach number of 0.2 at sea level. The pressure a. Continuity equation in vector form:
and temperature of air at this height are 101.325 kPa and 288.2
K respectively. The results show that the wing with winglet can
increase the lift by ratio approximately 12%. The wing with
winglet can decrease the drag by ratio approximately 4%. The b. Momentum equation in vector form:
wing with winglet can increase lift to drag, L/D by about 11%
along different phases of flight.
Keywords: CFD, Winglet, Induce drag, Lift, Vortices, Cant angle. c. Energy Conservation Equation:
a) Front view of wing with winglet b) Side view of wing with winglet
Twist angle (d )
Grid dependency check of lift and drag coefficient with the corresponding values in the
experimental and numerical models measurements.
The first step in performing a CFD simulation should be to
investigate the effect of the mesh size on the solution results. Effect of Winglet with CANT Angle 0, 30 and 45 Degrees
Generally, a numerical solution becomes more accurate as The present analyses were carried for three cases: a simple
more cells are used, but using additional cells also increases Cessna swept back wing, with no winglets, the same wing with
the required computer memory and computational time. To winglet at Cant angle (θ) 0, 30 and 45 degree at constant Sweep
examine the independency of the results to cell number, seven angle (γ) 0 degree. The wing has chord length 1.857 m with
mesh types were generated. The results of these seven meshes NACA2412airfoil is extruding by 5.7 m. the wing taper ratio is
are shown in Figure 6, Lift coefficient with number of grid cell at 0.5 and leading edge sweep back angle 11 degree to create wing
angle of attack (12°).the time for 500000 was about 2 hrs and the volume. The winglets have the same aerofoil of wing and length
time for 1500000 was about 8 hrs. 20% of semi span with sharp edge connection with wingtip, see
In order to save time when running the computations, the grid in Figure 7. These cases all have the same initial conditions. Since
with the smallest number of cells displaying an independent wingtip vortices are more prevalent at take-off conditions for low
solution should be used for the calculations. This is seen to be the speed and high lift conditions, the wings will be run at a Mach
case for a grid with around 1500000 cells. The Rectangular wing number of 0.2 at sea level. The pressure and temperature of air at
with NACA653218airfoil section model was used to verify the this height are 101.325 kPa and 288.2 K respectively.
work reported by [6], [9]. Comparing the results of the numerical Results and Discussion
model by Spalart-Allmaras model to those of the experimental
and numerical models measurements indicated good agreement From CFD model one can, typically, determine lift, drag, pressure
with the increase of the angle of attack; the effect of wings with
different winglet is not important at 0 degree angle of attack due
to low induced drag and the wings with winglet have more surface
area, which caused the friction drag to increase. At high angle of
attack, the induced drag increase and then the effect of winglet
increase to reducing induced drag. It was found that the lowest
drag coefficient; CD is WCSA-45-00 about 1.5% to 3.5% with
angle of attack compared to wing without winglet. The WCSA-
30-00 gives the second lowest drag coefficient, CD about 1% to
3.2% with angle of attack compare to wing without winglet.
Winglet
α=0° α=4° α=8° α=12°
configuration Figure 9: Predicted Drag coefficient, CD versus angle of attack, α, for
Wing with winglet at cant angle 0, 30, 45 degree and sweep angle 0
WCSA-00-00 0.15004 0.41157 0.64555 0.81786 degree with M=0.2 at sea level
Table 3: Lift-To-Drag Ratio, CL/CD wing with winglet at cant angle 0, 30,
45 degree and sweep angle 0 degree
Figure 11: Predicted upper static pressure contours for Wing Figure 12: Predicted lower static pressure contours for
with winglet at cant angle 0, 30, 45 degree and sweep angle 0 Wing with winglet at cant angle 0, 30, 45 degree and
degree with M=0.2 at sea level sweep angle 0 degree with M=0.2 at sea level
Nomenclature
x, y, z Cartesian coordinate components
b Span length of wing Greek Letters
C Chord length α Angle of attack
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